Quotas foe will fight in Florida

Californian Ward Connerly says his polls show the state is ready for a ballot initiative effort to end affirmative action.

By PETER WALLSTEN

© St. Petersburg Times, published March 14, 1999

TALLAHASSEE -- California businessman Ward Connerly says Florida will be the next battleground for his crusade against affirmative action.

Connerly, who led successful initiatives in California and Washington to end racial preferences, will make three appearances Monday in Florida to make his announcement.

"Florida is going to be a target for our national movement," Connerly said in a telephone interview with the St. Petersburg Times on Saturday. "I have concluded there is a problem in Florida."

Connerly, a member of the California Board of Regents, said he was bolstered by the results of a poll he commissioned within the past three weeks showing 80 percent of Floridians support his belief that college admissions and the awarding of state contracts should be colorblind.

But Connerly still has some loose ends to tie up, including the wording of the amendment, raising the millions of dollars it would take to get it on the ballot and pay for a media campaign to promote it, and enlisting Florida-based organizers to run the day-to-day operations of the effort.

He said he was "100 percent" sure he would lead an initiative drive in either 2000 or 2002.

If Connerly follows through with his promise, he would be thumbing his nose at the political establishment in Florida.

Connerly, who is a black conservative, is detested by many prominent black leaders, many of whom are Democrats. They complain he has become a tool of whites who want to tear down the system of racial preferences, contract set-asides and other forms of affirmative action that the country has set up to make up for centuries of discrimination.

He was supported in California by Republican Gov. Pete Wilson. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush met with Connerly in Tallahassee in January. But Bush later called Connerly's movement "divisive" and said he will not support it.

"While the governor is opposed to quotas and set-asides, we don't want to have a divisive political debate waged at a time when the governor's priority is improving schools and improving the lives of children, the elderly and the developmentally disabled," Nicolle Devenish, Bush's press secretary, said Saturday.

Connerly has said he thinks Bush privately agrees with his position, but is reacting based purely on his political motives to please the black community. If Connerly's poll is correct that Floridians overwhelmingly support his ideas, then such a debate in Florida could rip apart Bush's broad support. Some believe the California initiative doomed Wilson's national political aspirations.

"That is a fragile coalition," Connerly said of Bush's support from blacks.

In any event, Connerly's plans raise the prospect of a highly charged fight in Florida -- first to gather signatures to put the initiative on the ballot, then the actual campaign for and against. He could not provide details about his poll gauging support for his position.

So far, his only visible support inside the state is from representatives of the Associated General Contractors, who say their members lose out when minority firms are selected for state contracts. He will speak to the group when he makes his swing through Florida on Monday.

Depending on his strategy, Connerly predicted he would need to raise $2-million to $10-million -- money he said would come mostly from outside Florida.

With Connerly's backing, Californians voted 54-46 in 1996 for Proposition 209, which banned affirmative action in public hiring, contracting and education. In 1998, he led a similar anti-affirmative action initiative in Washington that passed 58-42.

Connerly's decision comes just three weeks after he hinted that he would not come to Florida because of mounting opposition from top Republicans. At the time, he said he was ready to drop the effort. But he said Saturday that he changed his mind when he concluded that targeting smaller states such as Nebraska or Colorado would not generate the same amount of national attention as Florida.

"Those states just don't have the same effect as going into the fourth-largest state in the nation," he said. "If you do this in enough high-profile states, soon the courts, legislatures and Congress will take over."

While Connerly said he has decided to target Florida, he still has some questions about how to do it.

He acknowledged Saturday that he is not sure his ballot language for a constitutional amendment would pass muster in the Florida Supreme Court.

The state Constitution requires all initiatives to "embrace but one subject and matter," meaning the high court could rule out Connerly's language because it would cover public education, employment and contracting. Connerly's amendment would prohibit discrimination in those areas based on several factors -- race, color, sex, ethnicity or national origin -- leaving open an argument that it covers more than one subject.

In the past, the state Supreme Court has strictly interpreted the single-subject rule, a fact that weighs heavily on Connerly's mind. He said his lawyers have said the amendment that passed in California and Washington would have a 30 percent to 50 percent chance of getting on the Florida ballot.

Connerly said his lawyers "have concluded that the Florida Supreme Court is a very activist, liberal court. One characterized it as a court that would consider (U.S. Sen.) Ted Kennedy to be a right-wing conservative."

That leaves Connerly with two options, he said. He will either submit his "omnibus" initiative to the state and risk getting rejected by the court, or he will divide it up into individual initiatives.

For example, he might decide to focus on racial preferences in higher education, or racial preferences in the awarding of state contracts.

Given all the permutations, Connerly said he could have as many as 30 initiatives, though he said his top priority would be education.

He also plans to support a separate initiative drive that would give the court the ability to modify proposed amendments rather than simply strike the ones that don't meet the single-subject rule.

Connerly said his lawyers would spend the weekend studying case law in Florida and he would make a final decision on his strategy by the time he makes his announcements Monday in Jacksonville, Altamonte Springs and Miami.

If Connerly goes ahead with his plans, he would need to gather more than 400,000 signatures. He said he might submit an initiative proposal for approval by the state Supreme Court as early as May. If the court rejects it, he could draft an alternative in time for either the 2000 or 2002 elections, he said.

Among those eager to hear what Connerly has to say Monday is Jim Bomford, a 50-year-old retired New York bridge and tunnel police officer who is coordinating the Orlando-area meeting. Bomford, a former Volusia County Republican official, said last week he contacted Connerly to volunteer after reading about him.

"I called him up and said, "Would you please come here?' " said Bomford, who believes he was unable to get into law school in the 1970s because of affirmative action policies that he contends reserved spaces for less-qualified minorities. "I'd like Ward to give us details about how to get this on the ballot, or provide whatever help he has."

David Biddulph, head of the New Smyrna Beach-based Tax Cap Committee, said last week his organization could provide Connerly with lists of 300,000 Floridians who have signed its amendment petitions and of 12,000 volunteers and donors.

"It's clear the establishment is not going to do anything about his idea without someone like a Ward Connerly," Biddulph said. "Florida is a big state, but he is very interested in establishing this as a policy for the country."
-- Times Political Editor Tim Nickens contributed to this report.